In the early days of SparkFun, our manufacturing “process” consisted of one zealous engineering student (that’s Nate Seidle) soldering away in his college apartment. Our infamous (the in-famous!?) tried-and-true hot-plate reflow method was one of the crowning jewels in SparkFun’s early history.

Now, things are a bit different. We have a full team of trained soldering ninjas putting together hundreds of boards every day. We have not one, not two, but three pick-and-place machines working round the clock. And we have two reflow ovens - one for reflow work and one to heat up pizza rolls for backup. All because the DIY electronics community is thriving and we have lots of work to do to keep the products you need in-stock and on the shelves. It’s a big challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun. Check out this video called “Birth of SparkFun Widget.” It’ll give you a nice visual idea of the steps involved before that red box lands on your doorstep:

We also have a new tutorial called “Electronics Assembly.” This tutorial details just how SparkFun does its manufacturing - from stenciling all the way to packaging up the parts. Part of the process has warranted the creation of whole separate wing of production known as “kitting.” Their process (and…uh…unique “skills”) can be seen in this video:

We hope these videos (and tutorial) help “demystify” the SparkFun production process and give you a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on here on a daily basis! As always, please feel free to leave any comments or questions below. Cheers!

Comments
52 comments

You need a “director’s commentary” on your Birth of a SparkFun Widget Video. Trying to figure out what was happening is some spots. Like what was the thing with the huge LED array? An optical scanner that checks for the right parts in the right place?

We’ve been running ours for over a year now. Like all machines and the software that runs them, it took some time to learn its quirks. Let us know if you ever have any questions about any specific detail…

We have a couple SAKI BF-Comets that require the hardkey to operate the software.
The SAKI machine is interesting in that it scans the entire board in one sweep like a flatbed scanner.
We also have a couple OMRON RNS AOIs but I like the SAKI machines better.

what kind of AOI do you guys have? We just got two Nordson AOI’s at work and they are really great machines. I just finished designing a vision system with some Keyence sensors for aesthetic checks. What about your pick and place machines? We have two Jukie FX’s and a Jukie 760.They are great machines!

And since sparkfun knows what they’re doing and they clearly do in-depth testing (see https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/electronics-assembly/inspection-and-testing ), they obviously have decided that anti-static isn’t worth it. That probably means they don’t see zapped chips often enough to bother.

It’s not like they’re a $30m a year company that excels at electronics assembly and they just didn’t think to wear anti-static stuff. I don’t do it at home and we don’t do it at my job and it’s never been a noticeable problem in either case.

True, but they’re not a semiconductor device manufacturer… they’re a hobbyist-geared (‘maker’) retailer. Besides, how often do -you- zap a device by electrostatic discharge? The fact is, it rarely happens. And it’s not like these are critical medical devices. No big deal. I’m sure they’d happily replace any zapped widgets that manage to bypass their quality control.

[edit]
If you want proper ESD handling, you should be prepare to pay twice as much. :P That gear isn’t cheap. Do -you- wear ESD kit while opening the box? I doubt it.

Just admit it. You guys probably DO reheat your Pizza in the reflow oven. Heck I back at one of the first places I worked at people were heating sandwiches wrapped in heavy aluminum foil in on the wave soldering machine.

Am I the only one who is wondering why someone doesn’t come out with a watch band (would like one for my Pebble!) with a snap connector for ESD? Or the only one with a tan line in the summer from wearing an ESD wrist band? IF you feel the static discharge… well, WAY too much. You’ll never feel what would destroy ESD sensitive components. Last board I did had so much ESD protection it wasn’t even funny! Reflow a pizza… fine. ESD is not a joke. It can do things you’ll never know until it’s too late and you have a failure that you can’t explain (an ESD failure is VERY difficult to detect or prove). It’s doesn’t always happen like “ZAP” and it won’t work…

We tried that once. Years ago we leased a refurbished labware washer but could never get the results we wanted with it. It’s hard to say which feature in the new washer made the most difference, but I tend to point to the built-in cleanliness monitoring system of the Aqueous unit that measures the resistivity level of the water in the wash chamber and keeps the wash cycle going until the desired level has been reached. We’re also a big fan of the integrated board drying system that allows us to move clean boards directly into our AOI machine after being washed. :)

You don’t have to drag that Seidle’s apartment always to the story. Yes. Everything started there, it was great. Story told.

Too many times.

Seems that these “news” are nowadays just praising how great Sparkfun is. Maybe Americans like this kind of marketing but I don’t understand it. But I’m European. Everytime half-funny stories how things work so greatly and “funny” in Sparkfun.

Sorry if it seems like we are tooting our own horn, so to speak. That’s certainly not the intent! We’ve had a lot of requests for “tour” videos for people who want to see behind the scenes, but can’t make it out to Boulder for an actual tour - so here they are!

Yes, definitely a reasonable mode for QC'ing a batch (as we call it here). This is something that we just started recently exploring and are attempting to integrate into our kitting process. There will likely be a blog post on this in the near(ish) future as we gather some metrics on how effective and worthwhile kit weighing for completeness is…

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